


Casualties by the Roadside

by sarken



Category: Real News RPF
Genre: Gen, Jim Beam, Marlboros, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 06:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some nights, it's all too much for Rachel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Casualties by the Roadside

She keeps Marlboros in the glove compartment for nights like this, nights when the old oak tree is backlit by the moon, nights when she is self-destructive enough to take a bottle of Jim Beam as her passenger. She likes to light the cigarettes and watch them burn, flicking ash onto the dirt and gravel road, letting it blend together in the dark.

She'll never do it, of course, never get further than revving the truck's engine as she stares at that century-old tree. It makes her the very stereotype of a liberal, she thinks, to know she would feel guilty if she killed that tree, if she took out that thing that has lived her life three times, even if she did it in the process of ending her own. She can feel the warmth of the cigarette as it burns down to the filter, and she wonders what it must be like, standing in the same place for a hundred years.

She thinks it might be nice. She thinks she could live without Amtrak, without a mortgage in one state and a lease in another. On nights like this, one life is too much to bear, and here she is, living two, living three, living four. She lives too many lives for too many people, and none of them is for her.

She kicks her feet up on the dashboard and inhales that final drag.


End file.
